


Shards of Glass Make Mosaics

by longnoideatime



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-21
Updated: 2020-06-21
Packaged: 2021-03-04 10:15:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24848137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/longnoideatime/pseuds/longnoideatime
Summary: A bitter Katara several years past the war's end considers her life and choices. M because it deserves it, but the smut is limited.
Relationships: Katara/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 73





	Shards of Glass Make Mosaics

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this at the exact same time as the first chapter of my other Zutara fic, so apologies if they sound too much the same.

Usually when people say there is something beautiful in broken things, they are really just searching for praise themselves. They are so deep, so unique, so special to find beauty in whatever it is they have decided is beneath the notice of the rest of society. But Zuko is beautiful, and broken too, and it is impossible not to know it. She watches him beneath the lights of the function they both attend, chandeliers glittering and refracted and somehow everywhere at once, mirrors placed around the room confusing the issue. They are labels that exist independent of each other. He’s been beautiful for so long she’s no longer sure she can exactly put the _why_ into words. Obviously he’s a handsome man, but it’s something beyond that, something that comes from knowing him as she does. She sips absently from her glass, an ornament at Aang’s side in her complete distraction as he talks to some Important Person. To any who casually assume the slender glass is most likely mijiu and water on her tongue. She prefers to torment herself with her own hatred of these events fully sober. Once she would have seen the scar and said the broken skin marring half his face would never let him be free of the reminders of those little glass shards scraping inside him they all carry, but now she’s no longer sure. Tonight she feels as though he and everyone else are beyond that, and she is the only one stunted in her own negativity, the only one who remains broken. Still, for however self-conscious she feels in her own simmering temper, he is the man who plays cards with her late at night, the man who understands her, perhaps better than anyone. He is so blindingly, brilliantly, burningly real he makes her feel like she is too. She does not exist for Aang to have adored from afar and then won at the end, nor to be the wet blanket or the moral authority that keeps whomever needs mothering together and focused in the right direction, she is real. She is a person on her own, and not in relation to anyone around her. 

It’s a strange thing to learn only when someone outside herself looks at her, that she is as valuable and capable and independent as everyone else, and she learned this because she could see that knowledge reflected at her in his eyes — that he thinks of everyone that way, if maybe her a little more. But she feels like he is the beginning of her being able to stand by herself. She learned she might have been wrong about who she had to be from him, and then something inside her wouldn’t let her stop, turning over everything in her life and realising it didn’t belong to her. She doesn’t get thirsty or hungry, doesn’t _feel_ those things, maybe a holdover from the years when she had to accustom herself to them. When she is one or the other, she starts to wonder why she feels so terrible, and then slowly she puts together enough to put a name to it. When she was finished, finally done looking at her life, she realised there was a feeling that had been scratching at her chest every _damned_ day: she was suffocating, in every moment, without even noticing.

They’re all together now, celebrating _something_ , some political thing that she promptly heard the name of and dismissed as meaningless, their “gaang”. Sokka and Suki. Toph and her cackling sense of superiority to everyone in the room. Zuko and Mai are here together. Her and Aang. Even Haru somewhere. She keeps looking at Zuko when she thinks he isn’t paying attention, letting Aang speak for her in every conversation. Usually she has to bite her tongue in anger when he answers questions directed at her, but tonight she is genuinely grateful she has to make no attempt at civility. She let him inside her body while they were alone in their room, even though she tried to put him off by protesting that Sokka was rooming one thin wall over. She doesn’t know what’s wrong with her that she couldn’t say no. Aang had wanted her so badly, and she’d said no in her tone and in her excuses and in her posture, but he hadn’t heard and she hadn’t wanted to fight, hadn’t thought it was worth it, hadn’t wanted to let him know that something was wrong, hadn’t wanted, hadn’t wanted, hadn’t wanted. Now she is even more furious, and for the life of her she doesn’t know if she has a right to be. He wanted to and something in her just _gives way beneath her_ so they did, and then he ignored how it was uncomfortable for her, how challenging it was to force their bodies together, and the casual selfishness of it leaves her breathless with rage. But she’s let him be selfish and blind, hasn’t she? So what right does she have to complain now, especially when he loves her the way he does?

She has to excuse herself from the room swimming with shark-eyed politicians, her own eyes prickling with angry tears and her breath threatening to heave out of her like the bellows of a blacksmith because she _cannot_ remember how to do it normally. She feels as though everyone is looking at her inside, as though everyone can see her one wrong move away from a shouting breakdown; outside there is only cool air to calm her.

“Are you alright?”

Part of her wants to be upset that he knows to be here, but she isn’t. She does manage to be upset at herself for secretly wanting him there, and she almost laughs at her own idiocy. Zuko comes and stands next to her at the railing of the balcony, and the feeling like she has run out of oxygen eases ever so slightly. She doesn’t normally feel like she’s alone or lonely, but when he’s next to her she suddenly feels different. As though she has an ally. It makes it so much easier part of her always wonders why she can’t feel this way all the time. 

Katara sighs and bends to press her forehead against the cool metal railing. She can feel his eyes on her, but she’s not sure she’s ready to meet them. “Do you remember the water tribe scroll that I stole from those pirates?”

“It would be hard to forget.” There is the slightest edge of a smile in his voice.

She considers making a joke about their collective discovery of his predilection for bondage, but she is not Toph or Sokka, capable of wisecracking in any situation. “I stole it because I wanted to learn more about bending,” she admits. “I didn’t know anything, and what little I did know Aang immediately took and was better at. So I saw it and I wanted it. Really badly. I said it was to help Aang, but really— When we got back to our camp by the river I was the first to try out the new moves. I kept getting frustrated and not getting them right and I snapped at Sokka and Aang, but somehow... I ended up apologising for wanting to use the scroll at all. And we all just acted like that was completely normal. Like I _was_ wrong for wanting to learn something for myself.”

Katara stands, facing Zuko fully for the first time that night. His eyes are unusually intent, trying to figure out what she means by telling him this. 

“My master—“ She hesitates, having never told anyone this before. She’s not sure even he’ll understand her. But there’s something in his face that makes her wrap her arms around herself and plow on, staring out at the city spread beneath them. “He wasn’t going to teach me. I fought him as best I could, but _of course_ he won. And he was walking away and would have kept going if he hadn’t found out I was my grandmother’s granddaughter. He didn’t teach me because of anything I’d done, and I fought so hard. I really thought it would be enough, but it meant _nothing_. And I just— I’m struggling.” These last two words come out of her so quietly she doesn’t know if he hears them.

His hand on hers is a surprise, Zuko never exactly seeming comfortable with physical affection, but his eyes are so serious now they’re all she can see as soon as she looks at him. “You know that other people being stupid doesn’t make any less of everything you did after.”

She holds his hand back and squeezes for a heartbeat, two. “I know that it doesn’t, I _know_. I just feel like I spent so long with people pretending that my strength, or me wanting to be strong meant nothing that I started to forget how much it mattered. I mean what am I doing, Zuko?” She’s squeezing his hand too tightly now, her voice getting shriller as something buried in her chest rears its head and begins to snake up her throat. She feels almost like she’s going to vomit, words escaping her that shouldn’t, but the remembrance of the suffocation that has only barely eased with his presence is making her panic. “I don’t _do_ anything, I’m just— I’m just the Avatar’s _fucking_ human pacifier!”

She is breathing like she’s run a marathon, and the air after she’s said those words is so still she feels it tightening like a noose around her neck. She looks at him in horror. “Oh, spirits. Oh, shit. Pretend I didn’t say anything— Zuko, you have to promise me—“ She’s grabbing desperately at his collar now, the enormity of her own admission terrifying. “ _Promise me_ you’ll forget all about this!“ She laughs nervously, hysterically, stumbling away from the reassuring warmth of his body towards the door. “I just— I’m drunk, don’t listen to anything I say. Oh, fuck.” Her hand on her forehead in disbelief, she is almost inside again when his body pushes her against the wall, caging her in and following after her. He’s always been taller than her, and she has to crane her head backwards to meet his eyes properly, his own breath coming too heavily, their faces nearly touching.

“You haven’t been drinking tonight,” he says quietly. They’re so close together, and his yellow eyes have gone dark, and the sense of relief she feels beginning to filter into her consciousness makes her reckless. 

She stretches up slowly, telegraphing each move she’s going to make before she does so as not to startle him, her lips brushing his cheek lingeringly. He smells good this close, something about it still familiar years later. 

He looks at her when she’s standing flat on her toes again and doesn’t move away. She’s not sure she could have more from him right now if she wanted. When they were younger, she knows she could have had him if she’d made a different choice, although she didn’t at the time. Or rather she didn’t know then if she was capable of trying to make that choice; she very carefully doesn’t wonder if she would do it all over again. But now he has Mai, and whatever they have been to each other he isn’t the kind. She’s not sure what to make of the fact that she is, her heart beating rapidly in her chest and visions of her dress pushed up around her waist while he fucks her against the wall in her head.

“Come back to the Fire Nation,” he says. His fingers hesitantly, softly brush the side of her face, tucking a stray strand of hair she couldn’t have cared less about out of the way. 

She snorts, looking past the cage of his arms towards the distant light that is the party they belong to. “With you and Mai?” She’s spent enough time pretending. 

“With Sokka then.” He sounds a hair desperate, and she’s not sure why until she looks back up at his face. He doesn’t want her to lose. Again. His hands are tighter for it, more fully around her in a way that would be hard to explain if anyone happened upon them. She shouldn’t lean into him, let him carry some of her weight, but she does, and so easily too.

She smiles at him because he needs her to. “No, I think I’m done bouncing from person to person for a while. I have to have something of my own first.”

“Will you actually try for it?” he asks. He hesitates, but eventually says what he means to anyway. “It will be different as soon as you’re back inside.”

She looks at him nakedly, her emotions bare beneath the kiss of the cooler air and the moon. He deserves it, for knowing what it will be to her so well, for trying to warn her. “I know.” She doesn’t want to say anything to Aang. If she could just disappear without him finding her again, she would be tempted. Alone she knows what she wants, but as soon as she sees him she’ll try to convince herself she’s wrong. And then he will, and that will be worse. “But I think something important might die if I stay.” He looks so worried she adds, half-jokingly, “Maybe Aang.”

He takes her hand, their bodies still far too close together for propriety, although he is carefully not touching more than her palm. “There‘s a waterbender. She‘s my closest friend, and I—” He looks away, although still forces out the words and manages to sound natural, if a touch too serious and shy. “—love her. Don’t let anything happen to her.”

She kisses the back of his knuckles and tucks her face against them, although she knows that wasn’t the sort of love he meant. She’s not sure if the kiss is meant to be an expression of that sort of love on her part either, she just knows she feels such an overwhelming tenderness towards him. He knows who she is, at her core, when she’s doing nothing to pretend. Only Sokka can truly say the same, and he still has all these expectations she can feel ringed around her neck. Zuko has never expected anything more from her than that she be exactly who she is. He makes her feel safe.

She lets go of his hand and slips back into the hallways, not wanting to cause any problems for him by their protracted absence. She doesn’t go back to the party, can’t, and tries to tell herself it’s alright, that she’s not letting everyone down if she only sits quietly in her darkened room.

He opens her door without knocking, seconds, centuries later. She turns to ask him what’s wrong, but then he is only kissing her, his lips crashing on to hers. There’s a new sort of suffocation in her chest, one that she’s suddenly not sure she’s ever felt before, fire licking at every inch of her skin as it feels like the only way to breathe is to be as close to him as possible, to subsume herself within him.

But he’s been drowned in fire before, she thinks, her fingers brushing the edges of his scar as she cups his face in either hand. She sighs against his lips, her body trembling with the want that is a conflagration searing every inch of her skin, and pulls away. His questioning eyes hold a reflection of the (wrong) decision she made so many (not enough) years ago.

“I love you,” she tells him fiercely, willing him to understand. She can’t take this from him; he wouldn’t be the same, even if he wants to pretend that isn’t true. And if she gave in, she doesn’t think once would be enough for her. Does she let herself be a person who only exists in relationships? Does she add “homewrecker” to the list of her epithets? From all she understands, he and Mai are solid. Other than this. Other than how much she is burning for him and he is willing to drown for her.

And because he is the person who knows her best, he understands what she means. He kisses her again, gently, and she makes herself hold still rather than clutching at his shirt as he leaves the room.

Someday. When she is whole, and whatever passes between them wouldn’t be built on unhappiness, her own and that of others. Such a day will come. She has to believe as much.


End file.
